I would believe absolutely anything of Oracle. Whether towards their customers or their employees, there is nothing I would deem too low for them. They are the embodiment of sociopathy.
Oracle sued by app sales rep: I made tens of millions for Larry, then fired for being neither young nor male – claim
A former Oracle application sales rep is suing the database giant, alleging gender and age discrimination, sexual harassment, and violations of US labor laws after being fired. The complaint, filed in a San Francisco district court on Monday, names Oracle and 25 unidentified defendants believed to have been involved in the …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 11:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @AC
"But seriously who would want to work for Oracle?"
Salespeople. I might dislike Oracle's products and have a serious disdain for the company, but that's driven by my role as a technologist and a customer. If you're someone who lives and breathes the sales process, Oracle is still a top place to work. There's almost nowhere else left you can work and regularly cut seven and eight figure deals as a matter of routine.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 22:52 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
@AC Re: @AC
For sales people its a job.
Oracle ranks around IBM... its a steady paycheck until you find a better place to be.
Oracle like IBM has to re-invent itself. It was primarily Oracle's high price for Exadata that caused a lot of companies to come up with a big data strategy. I mean for the cost of Oracle's licenses alone you could kit out a Hadoop cluster and break even after 16-18 months.
Those big ticket deals are dwindling. And your quota is based on what the territory did the year prior.
In a shrinking market... not that good.
And yeah, I know the sales side of the biz
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 22:47 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
@Lurker ...
I know many of those minions.
Oracle has many women in their sales force.
The key metric is the base salary of the woman and those of her underlings.
Assume that they are all on the same sales incentive plan.
Now you take a look at the cost per revenue generated by the sales rep.
If the woman had a base that was double that of her younger counter part and she didn't bring in twice the revenue, then she would cost more than the younger person. It would be simple math.
So you can take a look at the cost of revenue by sales rep to see who's more efficient. It could be that the younger worker, even though he brought in less revenue was still a cheaper option.
That's the straight bean counter argument.
That said... the allegations of harassment is another issue. Again it could be ageism or sexism, or neither.
Sales critters tend to be pack animals. That is... if you don't belong to their pack, they will cut you out. So it could be not so much a 'good ol boys network' but something close. (Women too can be part of the pack.)
I was once part of a team of top performers at Big Blue.
After I left, one of my friends was cut. Not because of his age... (they were all older seasoned vets.). But he happened to have two quarters where he was the low man in the group. Wrong place at the wrong time. I had left a couple years earlier because even though I was pulling out the best numbers in the territory, my quota exceeded what the region could produce. Its another way to force someone out. Unrealistic quotas for the territory forcing you to kill yourself for a target you could never hit.
I wish her luck, but its always going to be difficult to prove sexism or ageism because the deck is stacked against you. The best thing you can do is to be an independent consultant. You make more for taking on slightly more risk. But you get to call your own shots.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 10:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
We only have her word for it
Oracle might not be the nicest company in the world, but this could be just some bitter former employee playing the sexism/ageism card. We only have her word for everything that supposedly happened, the truth could be that she was simply crap at her job. And she'd only been there a few years, its not like she served 20 years without any problems up until that point. The truth is usually more complex than the simplistic tabloid presentation that this site often dishes up.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 12:26 GMT Alien8n
Re: We only have her word for it
@boltar
"We only have her word for everything that supposedly happened"
It's in court, and everything she's "claimed" will be verifiable in court. If anything she has claimed turns out to be false she's then open to a counter claim by Oracle which would almost definitely cost her everything she owns plus more. I'm willing to err on the side that she's telling the truth. Especially as Oracle has form for doing exactly what she's claiming. So you can put your misogyny back in it's box and hopefully learn from this experience why you've been downvoted and moderated for your comments.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 12:51 GMT Alien8n
Re: We only have her word for it
@boltar
"So because she has XX chromosomes we're supposed to automatically believe everything she says? Grow up."
No, but given Oracle's track record on this, and the fact that everything she's claimed will be verifiable by the court (Oracle will have financial records and disciplinary records for everyone involved in the case and the court will have access to them) then I'm willing to bet that yes she was fired for simply being an older woman. Which just begs the question why you're so willing to immediately accuse her of lying purely based on the fact she's female?
As stated elsewhere, when an entire team is underperforming it's a safe bet the problem isn't the team, but the management. And by singling the women out it's also a safe bet that the prevailing "boy's club" mentality was in full swing and her managers were looking for scapegoats. Also the fact that she was granted medical leave by Oracle's HR department also shows they were aware of the harassment she was getting but refused to intervene to prevent it. All of this will be on record, and all of this will be viewable by the court.
But don't let your hatred of women get in the way of facts ($deity help any women defendants if you ever get put on a jury)
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 14:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We only have her word for it
"She’s hitting her numbers"
She SAYS she was hitting her numbers. How hard it to understand this disctinction? Until its all out in court no one on here knows so modding me down simply for expressing that fact is the act of petulant little children. But thats par for the course on this site these days.
Go on kiddies , mod me down even more. Oh bless, does it make you feel all sanctimonious morally superior by joining the right-on group think? LOL :)
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 15:32 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: We only have her word for it
How hard it to understand this disctinction
About as difficult as you being incapable of understanding that Oracle will have to defend their actions in court and, if (as expected) she was fired simply for the crime of having an additional X gene, then they'll be shown for the serial mysoginists that they are..
Sounds like you'd fit in there well.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 15:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We only have her word for it
"Oracle will have to defend their actions in court "
Yes, and?
"(as expected)"
By whom? You? Or you think this article was written by an Oracle insider and not just another Reg wannabe tabloid journo with an agenda?
"Sounds like you'd fit in there well."
Sounds like you're another poster who can't - or doesn't want to - read but simply wants to jump on the bandwagon to get mod points.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 19:30 GMT A. Coatsworth
Re: We only have her word for it
>>just another Reg wannabe tabloid journo with an agenda?
Wow, boltar, thanks a lot for opening my eyes to the insidious anti-Orcale, pro-women (*shudder*) conspiracy that is going on in the underbelly of The Register.
I'll cancel my subscription and demand a refund forthwith!
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 14:20 GMT deive
@fandom: "But then, she is in sales, she may be "embelleshing" what happened."
You know I hate sales in general as much as everyone else seems to here (in general), but you would not as an individual take a large corp to court in America if you didn't at least have truth on your side. The courts are just too expensive and unreliable. This is why I believe she is telling the truth, plus the fact that.. it's bloody oracle!
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Tuesday 20th November 2018 22:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Oracle sales was a mess at that time..
Uncle Larry's minions had ordered their US sales teams to focus exclusively on sales of Cloud Services, and push any inquiries about on-premise software sales to Hyderabad-based telephone sales centers. No bonuses for US sales for non-Cloud sales, either. I'm willing to bet Oracle FSAA sales were hurt because who wants to put their financial data in the cloud, it's safer to sit back and skip a version and wait for it to sort itself out. Source = drunk Oracle salespeople and observation as a client, hence AC posting.
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Tuesday 20th November 2018 22:16 GMT Cyril
If a whole sales department misses their goals, you don't PIP the workers, you PIP the managers. You fire the only two women in your department? There is zero chance that it is a coincidence. In the US you don't ever fire the last woman in your department unless you have fired a couple of men before her. And you better have hard numbers that will stand up in court before you even consider it.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 01:19 GMT a_yank_lurker
More than liking she was in the upper part of the group given her experience for total sales and being on plan. I would have expected a couple of the younger, party animal men to be on the bottom (deserving to be fired) not a couple of middle aged women. (I am a male btw). Something smell rotten.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 07:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
PIPs are fake
In my experience, a PIP is only ever implemented if HR wants to make someone redundant without the associated disadvantages and costs. In this case too, a PIP allows spectacular abuse of an employee in the name of "improving performance" whereas the real goal is to harass people so much that they resign themselves and so save the company both the cost of making someone redundant and the problem of not being able to immediately replace the individual with a more agreeable person (read: younger, more pliable or cheaper).
If you're ever put on a PIP, document the months before and the events themselves, because HR is just trying to get rid of you cheaply. There is no upside to this, so make sure that your departure is more costly to the company than if they had at least been honest.
The easiest way to fight this in court is to ask for evidence that a PIP has ever been successful..
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 08:07 GMT Lord Elpuss
Re: PIPs are fake
"The easiest way to fight this in court is to ask for evidence that a PIP has ever been successful.."
Speaking as someone with some legal experience in this area (from the company side), there is pretty much zero chance that this approach would work. Oracle would argue (and the judge would concur) that whether PIPs have been successful in other circumstances is in no way relevant to THIS PIP, for THIS particular situation and THIS person.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 07:14 GMT Pascal Monett
The bare facts of the matter
She was the best-performing salesperson and she's the one they sacked.
That in itself demonstrates how wrong Oracle manglement is about handling situations correctly.
I just don't get it. If I had a problem with sales, I'd be asking the best performers to coach the other guys, not antagonizing them. That's probably why I am not head of a multi-billion dollar company : I'm not enough of an asshole.
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Wednesday 21st November 2018 08:10 GMT Lord Elpuss
Re: The bare facts of the matter
The article's not completely clear, but it appears she was personally responsible for $20m in revenue, and contributed to a $73m deal. This is the kind of loose change that Oracle execs find in their pockets when looking for parking money, so it's unlikely she would have been kept on sales performance alone.
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